While many Russians were relaxing at the dacha or lolling on beaches overseas, back home in Moscow the air conditioning was humming around the clock in the Duma building.   After eight weeks of hard work, the parliamentary session ended on Friday — Friday the13th. Indeed, as regards to political freedom, the Duma session looks […]

If you travel overseas this summer, you may board the plane carrying a financial hand grenade in your pocket – your cell phone. Airport security will not detect its explosive power. But you will, when you get home and see your mobile phone bill. On May 2, I flew from Moscow to New York for […]

Moscow is easily at its best in the summer – lots of green, less traffic, stylish clothes, plenty of energy, and constant cultural stimulation Last week, I attended a Moscow News round table on how to make Moscow a global city. Judging by my Sunday, Moscow is already there. The afternoon started with Canada Day […]

The world may indeed be flat. Several thousand Russians recently traveled to the western edge of their country – and fell off. They fell into a largely invisible history chasm that cuts Russia from its Western and Southern neighbors. This mental moat is on full display at Euro 2012, the once every four years European […]

On Monday in Mexico, Vladimir Putin and Barrack Obama appeared together before the press. The Russian President leaned diagonally away from the American President, as if Mr. Obama had a contagious disease. At a press conference the next day, Mr. Putin belittled American Treasury bonds as untrustworthy, derided US-Russian trade as “peanuts,” and then threatened […]

The young protester handing out fake “Go Straight to Jail” tickets just didn’t get it. In advance of Tuesday’s protest demonstrations, President Putin signed into law a bill raising individual fines for illegal protest 100-fold. On the eve of the protest, his police raided the homes and apartments of the best known opposition leaders. At […]

Sergei Shoigu, the newly appointed governor of the Moscow Region, recently proposed that Russia move its capital to Siberia. Shoigu, a native of the Buddhist majority republic of Tuva, just north Mongolia, may have been playing to his home audience. The idea was immediately squelched, and the Moscow regional assembly dutifully approved Shoigu’s appointment to […]

Russia’s Urals oil has been over $100 a barrel for a year now. The country’s budgets are balanced. Debt is low. Savings are piling up. Russians are getting their pre-recession mojo back. On the consumer end, sales of foreign cars made in Russia jumped 90 percent during the first quarter of 2012 over last year. […]

As Viktor Bout starts his 25-year jail sentence in the United States, the question on the minds of movie goers worldwide is: will the convicted Russian arms merchant take a visit from Nicolas Cage? In the 2005 Hollywood movie, Lord of War, the American actor played a Ukrainian-American arms dealer who made his fortune selling […]